WordPress Plugins I Use

Published
September 19, 2012
by
Chris Coyier

I think this is a fun and useful style of post that any WordPress blogger can do. It's always interesting to hear in what ways people are extending what WordPress can do out of the box. I'll share the ones I'm using here on CSS-Tricks then you can share yours (either in the comments or in a post on your own WordPress site). My list is quite a bit different than the last time I did this in 2008. If you have some better alternatives to the ones I'm using, I'm always interested in that, too.

Allows me to create new buttons in the post editor of my own creation. I have buttons like "jQuery" which allows me to select some code I'm putting in a blog post and it wraps it in the tags I need to make it look like code and be syntax highlighted.

Gives me the ability to reward good comments and discourage bad comments. All I do is click links in the comment thread to apply class names and I style them. This is just one small tool in curating good comment threads. More on that here.

Speaking of better comment threads, I believe allowing people to see what their comment will look like before posting helps that. Especially on a site where people post code fairly frequently and how easy that is to screw up.

See the next plugin and it's notes for how the Markdown preview works.

Lastly related to comments, I allow people to write them in Markdown. I did this because 1) it's consistant with the Forums, which also allow Markdown and 2) I like Markdown.

I had to do a slight bit of custom stuff here in that I load up Showdown.js (a JavaScript port of Markdown) so that Live Comment Preview can do it's preview with Markdown as well. It was a two-line change in the comment preview plugin, but it's something I have to be aware of when updates come around.

At the end of each blog posts, lists a couple of other blog posts that people might be interested in reading. The idea is to be helpful to readers with the side bonus of keeping people on your site and engaged.

The heart that makes The Lodge work. Some content just isn't availble to view on the site unless you've logged in and have an active subscription. This makes all that happen. I use the PayPal Pro and CSV user import plugins for it. Plugin plugins!

Allows me to force certain pages on CSS-Tricks to be SSL just by checking a checkbox. For instance, I do this one the Lodge Signup page, because it collects payment information and that really needs to be secure.

It should be noted that in order for this to be useful you need to:

Have a valid SSL certificate installed on your site

Have your server set up to mirror your site on the HTTPS side (or otherwise do something smart)

If you're using a CDN, make sure it can handle HTTPS too.

Make sure all resources you use (images, CSS, JS, fonts...) are also HTTPS.

Takes care of all the little best practices stuff that is tedious to deal with otherwise. Things like using ideal page title formats, proper meta tags, canonical URLs, sitemap building, social media data, etc.

Very helpful to see this list, since their value has been “proven” (so to speak) on a popular site.

What I miss though, is which are the “best” plugins for custom post types and custom fields. I really like Custom Post Type UI and Just Custom Fields. They work fine for me but (as with everything), I always wonder if there’s something better out there.

Also, the lack of a contact form plugin makes me wonder if you would advise everyone to use a Wufoo-based form in their WordPress site, or if that’s just your personal preference (and since you used to work there)?

The Jetpack plugin I mentioned above has contact forms. But yes I would recommend Wufoo, and not just because I worked there, but because it’s definitely the best form building app and works perfectly well with WordPress (even .com).

If you can afford it, Gravity Forms is the bomb. Worth every penny, IMO. Wufoo is great too, and it’s what I used before Gravity Forms. But I always noticed some lag time when the form loaded, since it was being called with javascript from Wufoo. And being able to manage your forms and the rest of your site in one place is nice too.

I totally second WP-Markdown. I have come to the conclusion that I really dislike the standard WP editor, but WP-Markdown rocks. A plugin that unfortunately doesn’t work out of the box with Markdown (I’ve modded it, and trying to figure out how/if to share it) is WP-Typography, which marks up a lot of things nicely. For development I also use Broken Link Checker and Log Deprecated Calls. And finally, though this might be overkill, I’ve started to implement Better WP Security. …Why, yes, I do have a lot of spare time <.<

Chris, This is a very cool list of plugins. I created a similar page on my website with all the plugins I use. The point of doing it in a page vs. posts is this way I can keep it updated. You can check it out here:

I find Advanced Custom Fields to be pretty indispensable and use it in just about every project I do now. I haven’t found a better way to allow different types of content while making it easy for users to maintain everything.

@Scott. I agree. I use ACF more and more. Very well done and great support.
I use with custom post type, instead of widget staff, for home page Gestion.
If you use Flexible Content Field, you can make very complexe lay-out easy to manage on client side.

Advanced Custom Fields is probably the most useful plugin I’ve found, especially for client sites. It really gets WordPress feeling like a capable CMS by allowing you to completely customize how content is put into pages, posts, etc. Instead of the big ‘ol WordPress box, you can break everything up into discrete fields that make complex layouts easy to manage and harder to break.

True, we’ve had custom fields for a long time, but to really use them you need some WP Jedi skills. This plugin makes them easy and takes them to a whole new level of awesome.

Chris, this is excellent. I use W3 Total Cache and WordPress Seo. They are absolutely the best. I use plugins similar to others that you use, but I really need to use AddQuicktag and WP Page Numbers. Polls would be a nice addition to my site as well. Vaultpress would probably be a good idea as well. I have heard only good things about them.

Thanks Chris, for giving us some insight to what a true pro in the field uses on their WordPress site.

I was waiting to see someone post about Types. That plugin has become a necessity for me in terms of WordPress development, it makes creating Custom Post Types so ridiculously easy and allows for wonderfully advanced customization with a few clicks.

So the API is officially shutting down in October, but the service looks like it will stay around. Maybe someday they’ll kill it too, but I doubt they’ll upgrade the current status and tell us the whole service is going down too.

I have a hunch it will stick around — I imagine it’s pretty valuable data to google to have so much public content flowing through their service.

I kind of agree, but I also feel that it is bad to reinvent the wheel, unless the issue with the wheel is such that you can only take parts of the existing wheel to make the wheel work the way it should. …And I think I might be tired, that comparison was a bit weird.

That said, if the theme is just/mainly for one client/oneself, one might as well. If it’s for sale/other, I am concerned about people losing settings/stuff if there’s too much built into the theme.

I try to fly bare bone but if I must, Gravity Forms, Contact Form 7, BackupBuddy, NivoSlider, Cart66. Just seems like any hack I’ve ever encountered have come in through plugins so I try to keep to just the trusted ones.

In regards to ‘Advanced Custom Fields’, I used to use it a lot but now I just roll my own custom meta boxes. Keeps clients away from trying to feel like WordPress gods.

I use Gravity Forms and I think it is worth paying a few bucks to RocketGenius for it. If you haven’t checked out Wufoo, you should. It’s a hosted solution but it’s super solid and awesome. And for the record, as far as I can tell RocketGenius blatantly copied Wufoo’s interface.

Interesting… Have you found it accurate? Does the detection happen soon enough to alter page content on the fly? and lastly, is it faster than a combination of media queries and jquery / javascript for doing responsive sites?

I have used both Advanced Custom Fields and Types. I mostly use Types now, as well as Views. Views is a paid plugin, but useable on multiple sites – both Types and Views allow you to export / import so you don’t have to rebuild functionality on a new site… I use WPML for multilingual sites.

Also, during development I have found Reveal to be handy in determining just which template is called in which situation…. (but remember to turn it off before going live!).

but I don’t necessarily need all of em. (Which is about 200kb to load). I found a nice little web app called fontello http://fontello.com/ which allow you to choose only the type you want and I end up with 53kb

Thanks for the list, Chris. Definitely checking out some I haven’t tried before. I myself keep a personal list of plugins on my site I use and trust (on my site’s menu, go to WordPress > Plugins, I’m not sure if it’s alright to post my own link here).

I’m also wondering why you’re not using any social sharing buttons on this new theme of yours.

Not sure if it was already mentioned in the comments, but s2member is really nice for managing subscriptions and restricting content. It has an API, and allows you to easily access a bunch of user variables. I found it through the ever helpful IRC #wordpress room :-)

It’s the only subscription management plugin I’ve tried, so I’ll have to take a look at the one you mentioned. My client had a use case that wasn’t handled by the plugin by default (limit user to x number of logins) and I was able to easily add the functionality using the plugin API.

Using the wordpress platform we will be greatly helped by the many useful plugins. This is very different from the platform blogspot, I hope in blogspot the future also provide a special plugins that can be easily installed in a blog without the need to manually edit
Thanks for this list :)

Hey all!
Awesome post and great to find some new plugins I have not used before.
I have curated a list on github which I hope people will fork and submit pull requests. Good idea for a repository of plugins? Essential WordPress Plugins

Great article, one of the better plugin listings, not sure about some of the ones listed. Biggest issue now with all the folks using WP (which is a good thing) is that so many plugins do similar things but use larger and larger amounts of bloated code. I am digging the login redirect by far.

Boon’s Simple Social Sharing (these are lightweight without counters that load super quick)
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
Login With Ajax
Plugin Organizer (just started using this but allows you to disable plugins on pages that don’t use them)
Post Tags and Categories for Pages (a must if you have a page-based site)
Display Widgets (visual version of Widget Logic – better for clients)

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